Foster Culture of Innovation in Digital Health Transformation to achieve success.

Creating and nurturing a Culture of Innovation is fundamental for any Digital Health Transformation. And yes it is a complex process, but for those, who are passionate to change the world for the better, is the ultimate labour of love, rather than a Sisyphean effort pushing the boulder up to the hill.

We share the view that you need to start the journey from yourself, as a leader, who will need to understand what is Culture of Innovation and how to apply the elements to help you create the right cultural framework.

There are various descriptions of what Culture is and what are the attributes of the Innovation Culture. Ray Dalio, entrepreneur and philanthropist, describes Culture, as “the engine for your strategy”, “Great cultures bring problems and disagreements to the surface and solve them well, and they love imagining and building great things that haven’t been built before”-

There are various attributes to the Culture of Innovation, but what are the elements that impact Digital Transformation in Health most and that will empower you when leading a Digital Implementation at a fast pace, based on our experience for the last 5 years.

We believe the attributes, that will support your leadership most are focused around Trust, in the way you lead and work with others, Transparency in the way you face challenges, Experimentation, Creativity in the way you redesign, services and operational flow, Learning and Building meaningful relationships in the way you encourage growth and collaboration.

In many of our implementation projects we are not in a position to change the overall Organisational Cultural, but we can be bold and work within the limitations of every given project, or setting.

Digital Transformation projects will struggle to deliver sustainability and impact, if you don’t build the right understanding, establish trust in the process and inspire expectations for the “great things, that haven’t been built before”.

What we can do and it is in our control, is to bring the Culture of Innovation attributes and inject them into the way we lead an implementation and our Change Management Strategy and tactics.

Here some examples of how you can translate and apply those into practice:

Define Your “Why”. Every programme, or project we worked on, have outcomes and resulting benefits and so on…, but very rarely in healthcare are defining why we need to do a specific initiative and even overall transformations.  Our stakeholders know what we are there to do and how we are going to do it, but are unable to specify the Why.

We are often invited to deliver a programme, or project because something has been mandated, or there is a funding for it. Defining the Why as a mission and a purpose motivates positive behaviour, according to Simon Sinek, author and entrepreneur.

Trust in the process and your teams and demonstrate this every day.

Trust will encourage your team to fully commit to the project and perform at their best. Trust will create diversification of opinions, encourage creativity. Micro-management is style form the past. Embrace the variety and keep specifics on deliverables and deadlines.

Create and establish principals, not burdensome control mechanisms, to drive the implementation.

Talk and apply Agile  – Agile is not just methodology, Agile is flexible, fast and action orientated approach in the implementation process. Agile faces challenges and changes tactics quickly. “Stick to the plan” is well overrated, stick to the principals instead, and if something is failing, learn and move quickly to adapt.

Listen, discuss, reflect, create habits, routines that will shape a micro culture for your project. Inspiration and passion is not enough. If you are striving to lead a strong implementation, you need a strong team. Great Digital Leads create friendly environment, demonstrate responsive behaviour, listen to their team and reflect.

Learn to unlearn, teach others how to learn to unlearn and learn again something that will be helpful.

It may sound confusing, but this is a new skill we all need to master and if you are not open to commit to it, best is to find another profession.

And the innovators – they are invigorated by the new opportunities more than ever because there is a need and there is an urgency, supported by clinical appetite and motivation as well as investment.

As Digital Leaders and Digital Transformation experts for healthcare we see tremendous opportunities for impact not only in the way we work, but the way we think.

We have the environment to support this change by harnessing technology and create understanding and meaningful relationships and “Due to Covid” we must accelerate, the exciting future of healthcare.

If you need an implementation advice, or want to share your challenges contact us.